INTERMISSION: HAPPY HAPPY HALLOWEEN IV

Halloween again? Well that came around quick didn’t it? But you won’t hear any complaints around these parts, not with all the monster movie marathons on the tube. Plus, it means we get to offer our annual Halloween costume suggestions based on some of the movies we’ve taken a look at over the past twelve months. (Yes, it’s a bit last minute, but so’s everything else on this blog this year.) Long time readers know that we present this service for those of our fellow Christians who, despite the possibility that Halloween may actually have jack squat to do with paganism, might still feel uncomfortable dressing up in some of the more grotesque fare one can find lining the store shelves.

Of course, I suppose some of our costume suggestions could be considered a bit on the grotesque side also. Take our fist one for example, the severed head from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. All you need is a TV-tray sized cardboard collar, a sheet hanging down from it for a table cloth, a swimming cap to top it all off and, voila, instant decapitated debutante. If you want to add a bit of a biblical touch to it, just throw on a fake beard and call yourself John The Baptist. It’s almost a 100% guarantee that you’ll be the only one at your church’s seasonal Hallowed Be His Name Festival dressed in this ensemble.

Speaking of costumes nobody ever seems to wear when they go go trunk or treating in their church parking lot, what about the devil, or Mr. Boogaloo, as he’s known in The Apple? Oh sure, it’s a questionable choice, but he is right there in the Bible, and who knows, it might be just the jolt someone needs to be reminded that the Church still teaches the reality of what the Catechism calls that “seductive voice, opposed to God… a fallen angel, called Satan or the devil.” Yep, we still believe such an entity exists. Now maybe he doesn’t actually prance around decked out in heavy mascara and a ton of glitter trying to beguile us with his blatantly non-musical singing voice like Mr. Boogaloo… but then again, maybe he does. I wouldn’t put anything past him.

If that’s a bit over the top, but you still want to be weird for the evening, then you can always assemble an ensemble from Voyage Of The Rock Aliens. This outfit modeled by the inimitable ABCD is just one of the many retro-nightmares to be found in the movie. And it should be easy to put together quickly as most Gen-X’ers probably have some old Chess King clothing tucked away in their attics somewhere. If you can get them to admit to it. At any rate, as cheesy as the outfits are in Voyage Of The Rock Aliens, I’d still choose them over any of the Lovecraftian visions of madness to be found at Bad Vestments. View them if you dare!

And, hey, bad liturgical outfits aren’t just for humans anymore. Just in case you want your cat to hate you for eternity, there’s also… the Anti-Pope Cat costume.

After the night’s festivities are over (and you’ve locked the cat out so it doesn’t kill you in your sleep), why not wind down All Hallows Eve with a tour of some of the creepy offerings Now Showing At A Blog Near You.

The Happy Catholic offers up her list of some of her favorite Halloween recommendations.

Helm’s Deep and Spiritual Popcorn both take a stab, so to speak, at the recent release of Predators.

Father Steve Grunow of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries muses on the status of Catholic culture and Halloween.

I haven’t tried it out yet, but for those with an Android phone, there’s a new game/app called Ghosts’n Zombies where you play a monk sent by the Vatican to eliminate demons from an ancient chapel.

Creative Minority Report wants to know what’s the scariest book you’ve ever read.

The Catholics Next Door went to DragonCon.

And finally, since I’ve taken every opportunity to poop on the movie Legion whenever possible, I suppose it’s only fair to let the director have his say. In an interview with Shock Till You Drop, Scott Stewart explains his mangling of Christian theology by revealing “I was raised Jewish so I was an Old Testament guy with no experience reading Revelations so I read a fundamentalist view, a teaching guide of Revelations. It was nuts.” Sigh. Without even going into what is and is not a fundamentalist, can we just say, Mr. Stewart, that you could have at least spent ten minutes on the freakin’ Internet discovering that the overwhelming majority of Christians don’t hold to scaaary fundamentalist interpretations of Revelation. Which book, by the way, doesn’t have an ‘S’ on the end of its name. Cripes! How many times can I poop on Legion? NOT ENOUGH!

Well, that’s it for this year’s Halloween shindig, see you again next time. Unless, of course, you were unwise enough to invest in that Anti-Pope Cat costume, in which case… good luck. I’ll be sure to light a candle for you in two days when All Souls Day rolls around.

THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #5 – CAMP BLOOD: THE MUSICAL

Yeah, I know. It’s another slasher movie parody. But wait, this one has musical numbers! Of a sort.

Camp Blood: The Musical is a 30 minute shot-on-video short film which, by the creators’ own admission, was filmed in only two days on a budget of less than $200… most of which was spent on official Camp Blood t-shirts and beer. Despite this (or maybe because of it), the film managed to win the Audience Award at the RI International Horror Film Festival and picked up the honors for best actor and best original song from the LYM Online Horrowshow.

Alas, the following number (which is decidedly a hard PG-13 in content) is not the tune that won. But hey, you know, since the whole setup of this song is to introduce the usual set of slasher stereotypes, why not see if you can guess which of our happy campers turns out to be the Final Girl?

Well, that should have been pretty easy, but just in case you’re still not sure,  I’ll give you a hint: non-girls, whiny goth chicks, and cocaine sniffing trollops don’t typically get to be the Final Girl. That’s because, as we discussed way back in our review of Student Bodies, slasher movies often take the form of Morality Plays, a form of secular theater in which allegorical characters representing vices and virtues face a number of perils, with only the ones who stick to the moral path left standing in the end.

So why do these kids continuously ignore all of the warning signs (not to mention the Crazy Ralphs) in their blind pursuit of premarital sex, illegal drugs, more premarital sex, slovenly drunkenness, and even more premarital sex, especially once they start to notice the body count of those engaged in such pursuits start to rise? Well, most likely it’s because it only took them about five minutes to figure out that all that stuff can be pretty pleasurable. And pleasure’s not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. Any teenager will tell you that.

But as St. Thomas Aquinas points out, “God wills some greater good that cannot be without the loss of some lesser good.” And that brings us to the big philosophical word of the day: concupiscence. (That’s kon-kyoo-pi-suhns for those of you like me who never heard that word come up even once during Sunday School.) “Etymologically, concupiscence can refer to any intense form of human desire.” the Catechism explains, however “Christian theology has given it a particular meaning: the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason. The apostle St. Paul identifies it with the rebellion of the "flesh" against the "spirit." Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin. It unsettles man's moral faculties and, without being in itself an offense, inclines man to commit sins.”

In a sense, especially in the context of something like Camp Blood, concupiscence can be seen as our human tendency to settle for lesser goods like immediate sexual gratification rather than exercise our reason and put off those pleasures until they can be directed towards a greater good like holy matrimony. And that’s the challenge for us parents and teachers out there, isn’t it? Not to convince kids that the pleasures they’re chasing after aren’t good, but to show them that they’re not good enough. But how do we do that?

Well, your guess is as good as mine. But it was interesting to note in a 2005 New York Times article that “Catholic teenagers were far less apt to affirm belief in a personal God, to report having ever undergone a very moving, powerful worship experience, or to say their faith was extremely important in shaping their daily lives or major life decisions.” Maybe we can start by letting our kids see those things in our own lives.

Or we can just show them something like Camp Blood and say, “See, bad kids die!” Me, I’ve tried both.

THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #4–MAD MONSTER PARTY

I can only think only think of a handful of reasons anyone reading this blog hasn’t seen Mad Monster Party already. Maybe you didn’t know it existed. That’s fine. Or possibly you didn’t know it was available on DVD. That’s okay, too. Or perhaps as part of your spiritual walk, you’ve given up all forms of secular entertainment, even those geared towards children. That’s perfectly acceptable. But without one of those excuses or something equally valid, if you haven’t watched this Halloween treat yet, I may just have to declare you anathema.

Oh sure, it’s hardly the best of the Rankin and Bass productions, but come on, Mad Monster Party has all of the classic Universal Monsters (not to mention Phyllis Diller and a zombiefied Peter Lorre), features a freaky jazz soundtrack by Maury Laws, and stars Boris Karloff, who even sings! It’s just too much fun for any self respecting monster kid to pass up. Here’s the title track.

Mad Monster Party - Title Song
Uploaded by EegahInc. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

Okay, so maybe it’s a weird song for the Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer crowd, but I guess the little tykes have to learn about selling their souls to the devil some time, right?

Okay, maybe not.

But the song does make you think, however. With who knows how many stories having been told over the centuries of people who bartered their souls to Satan, have you ever wondered if that’s something you could actually do? You know, agree to some contract (written in blood or not) and hand over your soul to the devil? Well, the Catechism tells us that “the human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual… The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.” So, as Catholic Answers apologist Michelle Arnold explains, “While it is a mortal sin to attempt to sell your soul to the devil, it is impossible to do so. The soul, as the substantial form of the body, is an inalienable possession of the individual. It cannot be sold, stolen, folded, spindled, or mutilated. All one would have to do to return to a state of grace after attempting to sell one’s soul would be to go to confession.” Which is nice to know.

Of course, just because we can’t physically sell our souls doesn’t mean we can’t do so metaphorically. As Prof. Peter Kreeft explains in his book, Catholic Christianity, “He who sins is a slave to sin (see Rom 6:16). Sin is using our freedom to sell ourselves into slavery and addiction to sin. We forge the chains of our bondage with the power of our freedom.” So if your little ones happen to watch Mad Monster Party and ask you what it means to sell your soul, just give’em Kreeft’s explanation and save the heavy philosophy for later. But if they also ask you to explain how you could sell your soul at that party last night… well, you’re on your own there. Good luck.

THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #3 – BIG MEAT EATER

It’s the story you never knew you wanted to see! A scientifically inclined butcher accidentally creates a stockpile of radioactive meat scraps which not only has the power to raise the dead, but also attracts the attention of alien invaders who want the new element “balonium” for themselves. Oh, and just for good measure, there’s a gargantuan homicidal cannibalistic janitor turned butcher’s assistant who wants to kill and eat the whole town. AND it’s a musical!

Here’s the title song. Um, you vegetarians out there might want to give it a pass though, as there is much gratuitous mashing and mangling of meat in this clip.

Blech! That clip is almost enough to make a fellow swear off eating animals altogether. If only their charred dead flesh weren’t so tasty and full of proteins!

Oops. Was that insensitive? My apologies to any vegetarians reading this. But, you know, it’s not like eating meat is a sin. As Father George Rutler wrote (quite tongue in cheek) in a 2003 letter responding to Danel Paden, director of the Catholic Vegetarian Society, “Taste is one thing; it is another thing to condemn meat eating as “evil” and permissible only “in rare and unfortunate circumstances.” Paden disagrees with no less an authority than God, Who forbids us to call any edible unworthy (Mark 7: 18-19), and Who enjoins St Peter to eat pork chops and lobster in one of my favorite revelations (Acts 10: 9-16). Does the Catholic Vegetarian Society think that our Lord was wrong to have served up fish to the 5,000, or should He have refrained from eating the Passover Lamb? When He rose from the dead and appeared in the Upper Room, He did not ask for a bowl of Cheerios, nor did He whip up a meatless omelette on the shore of Galilee. Man was made to eat flesh (Genesis 1: 26-31; 9: 1-6), with the exception of human flesh.” Well, thank heavens for that last part.

Still, just because the Catechism assures us that “God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing”, that doesn’t necessarily give us carte blanche to go about it in any way we please. As the soon to be Pope Benedict XVI noted when questioned by a German reporter in 2002, “Are we allowed to make use of animals, and even to eat them? That is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God's creatures. Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.” So, there would seem to be legitimate moral reasons over which one might choose vegetarianism that have nothing to do with being an animal rights whacko.

Just remember, whichever diet you choose, you’re still under the obligation to take care of yourself. “Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God.” the Catechism reminds us, “We must take reasonable care of them.” So, if you choose a meatless existence, you still need to make sure you're getting enough proteins from other sources. And if you go the other route, preferring a menu of all creatures great and small, well… take a look at our big meat eater Abdulla up there. There are wrong ways to go about being a carnivore too.

THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #2 – ROCKULA

Rockula is the poignant tale of a young vampire who once failed to save the love of his life and was thereafter cursed to see her reincarnated over and over, only to be murdered every single time… by a pirate with a rhinestone covered peg leg wielding a large hambone. Okay, so it’s not really that poignant, but it is insanely loopy. Besides, who needs mopey serious vampires when you can watch this movie instead and see such sights as the legendary Bo Diddley jumping around on a stage during a rap number dressed like Goldmember or synth wizard Thomas Dolby portraying the world’s most narcissistic coffin salesman?

The prize for most bizarre appearance by a pop star in the movie, however, probably has to go to Toni Basil, that nice lady who’s been entertaining us B-movie fans ever since she first danced The Pony in Bert I. Gordon’s immortal classic Village of the Giants. For Rockula, she really lets the weird hang all out, as in this scene where her son the vampire has reluctantly brought home the latest version of his girlfriend to meet his mother.

You know, I wonder if this is how my kids see me? Um, not that I would ever do anything like dance around the living room in front of their friends wearing silly Halloween costumes. (Not that you’ll ever know about or be able to prove, anyway!) But rest assured, I’m sure I’ll do something to embarrass them over the years, so I just hope they’ll have picked up enough wisdom along the way to at least provide me with the same begrudging respect the undead Ralph shows towards his mom in Rockula. Even though she is a flaming loony.

Over the centuries Ralph seems to have learned, quite correctly, that a basic level of respect for one’s parents isn’t based on their personality, coolness, or even the material goods they provide. As the Catechism explains, “Respect for parents (filial piety) derives from gratitude toward those who, by the gift of life, their love and their work, have brought their children into the world and enabled them to grow in stature, wisdom, and grace… As they grow up, children should continue to respect their parents. They should anticipate their wishes, willingly seek their advice, and accept their just admonitions. Obedience toward parents ceases with the emancipation of the children; not so respect, which is always owed to them.” Now keep in mind, honoring a parent isn’t the same thing as loving them. If a parent has abused you, abandoned you, or some other such thing, you may not be able to feel love for them at the moment. But the command is still there to honor them.

That’s a pretty tough demand, really. But as Fr. John Hardon wrote in his Pocket Catechism, “Underlying this obligation is the virtue of piety, or devotion to the authors of one’s being. Thus filial piety is an earthly expression of the heavenly duty to honor God, who is the primary Author of all created beings.” So let’s all keep that in mind the next time mom makes an entrance in front of our friends wearing that bustier she picked up at Hot Topic and begins to pop and lock. Humiliating or not, she’s still ours.

SOMEBODY PUSHES ME, I PUSH BACK

Well, looks like I tasked yet another laptop a bit too hard and ended up with a crash that destroyed my boot sectors. The only fix the obstinate thing would accept was restoring the system back to factory default status, which meant losing everything on the C: drive, including three or four almost finished blog posts (I use Live Writer). After spending the last two days reinstalling three years worth of programs and updates, I’m ready to get back to work, but please bear with me as it will take a bit of time to retype all those nuggets of wisdom I stole from other smarter people. Sigh. The worst year of this blog continues.